Abstract:

Farmers in developing countries are struggling to feed families due to low crop yields resulting
from land degradation, land use pressures and unsustainable use of water resources. While
agroforestry has been practiced traditionally in the Mt. Elgon region since time immemorial.
with modernisation of society and commercialisation of agriculture, many farmers are
motivated to dismantle agroforestry systems in favour of monocultural farming systems. The
science needed to improve agroforestry in the Mt Elgon region should focus on tree-crop water
interactions because the competition for light and water is one of the main reasons that farmers
remove trees in favour of annual crops. Additionally, long-term adoption of agroforestry has
been negatively affected by an underlying culture of financial expectancy and highly
subsidized extension by research and development programmes, leading to ’false adoption'. I
participatory manner, have the promise of improving household food security, livelihoods and
resilience.
The study is aligned to a pragmatic interdisciplinary research approach to embrace the domains
of both biophysical science (tree-water use and crop productivity studies) and social science
(farmer motivations and perceptions). It seeks to understand how farmers’ knowledge and
attitudes towards agroforestry' change in response to exposure to the generation of scientific
information from biophysical experiments. The four central research questions for this research
retain trees on their farms?; (ii) what factors influence farmers’ perceptions of the impact of
trees on common bean and coffee productivity?; (iii) what are the impacts of trees and their
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are: (i) what influences the intentions of smallholder farmers in Mt. Elgon region to plant and
contend that modernised agroforestry practices, informed by science generated in a
management on crop productivity and water use across a range of farm contexts?, and; (iv)
I
Tanners’ perceptions about agroforestry tree
management in coffee-bean systems?
A conceptual framework integrating the biophysical and social components of the study has
been developed to inform the key agricultural technology adoption pathways of smallholder
farmers. The study had an initial phase of in-depth, semi-structured farmer interviews and